New gas pipeline to link Azerbaijan and Italy, via Turkey

Since the 1991 collapse of the USSR, resource-poor but strategically vital Turkey has sought to position itself as a major transit hub for burgeoning Caspian energy exports. For 15 years Ankara looked on helplessly as Russia, invoking its rights under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, turned the Turkish Straits into a tanker superhighway. Turkey derived no revenue from the transit even as its waters were put under increasing environmental threat.

Chafing under Moscow
In 2006 the thousand-mile-long Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline opened, allowing Ankara to receive transit fees on the one million barrels flowing through the region each day. Turkey hoped the funds would make up for the $40 billion Ankara claimed that it lost from transiting Iraqi crude because of U.N. sanctions. While Turkey